How To Sell Online Courses: A Step-By-Step Guide

Want to learn how to sell online courses? You’re in the right place.

Selling courses online is an excellent way to monetize your expertise and create a steady stream of recurring revenue.

In this post, I’ll guide you through a detailed, step-by-step process to get started.

First, we’ll look at how to choose a profitable niche and plan your course content. Next, I’ll walk you through building an interactive course website and selling your courses using Thinkific.

Finally, I’ll explain how to build a high-converting sales funnel and share some powerful marketing strategies you can use to attract and retain customers.

Part 1 – Planning your online course

All good things start with careful planning and online courses are no exception. Here’s how to get started.

Choose a topic

First, you’ll need to decide what topic you want to teach in your course. 

There are four things to consider here:

• Your knowledge & passion.  You’ll find it easier to create a course if you choose a topic you know about and enjoy. So ask yourself: What topics am I passionate about? Are there any subjects I’m a bonafide expert in? Do I have any skills that I can teach others?
• Your credibility. It helps to have a level of credibility in your niche when you’re selling courses. If people see you as an authority on your course topic, they’ll be more likely to purchase from you.  
• Market demand. It’s important to focus on a topic that there’s demand for. You might use keyword research tools to determine what course topics people search for or look at the best-seller categories on course marketplaces like Udemy to come up with ideas.
• Competition. Try to find a gap in the market and focus on a niche where there isn’t too much competition (i.e. a topic that few other course sellers have covered). Research the competition by looking at their enrollment rates, sub-topics they’ve explored, etc., and use this to inform your strategy.

Tip: It’s a good idea to start by thinking about who your target audience is when brainstorming potential topics. What do they want to learn? What problems are they trying to solve? 

Define the learning outcomes

Once you know what topic you’re going to teach, decide what the learning outcomes of your course are going to be.

In other words, what will your students have achieved by the end of it? What new knowledge or skills will they walk away with, and how will it help them?

For example, let’s say you’re creating a course to teach the basics of SEO. Your learning outcomes might look like this:

• Understand the fundamentals of search engine optimization
• Know how to optimize your on-page content to rank in Google
• Know how to perform a technical SEO audit
• Understand the basics of off-page SEO and link-building

You might then break these overarching learning outcomes down into smaller learning objectives, which you can work towards in different chapters of your course (more on this next).

Create a course outline

Next, you’re going to create a course outline. This will detail the general structure of your course.

Start by outlining your course chapters. Chapters are larger sections of the course (like modules) that act as an organizational framework for lessons. Each chapter should focus on a specific sub-topic or learning objective. 

Then, make a list of individual lessons that you’ll be including in each chapter. Include notes on what students will learn in the lesson, the learning activities you plan to include, any supporting material you’ll need to provide, etc.

Finally, outline any assessments you plan to include in your course, and when students will need to complete them (e.g. at the end of each chapter). 

Consider how you’ll assess submissions too—will you offer automated grading or manually review each submission yourself? Will you offer personalized feedback? Will learners get a formal certificate with a grade at the end?

Put all that together into a single course outline. Make sure that you specify time frames for each chapter/lesson/assessment in the outline too so you have an idea of how long it will take students to complete them. I like to aim for 5-10 minutes per lesson and 1-2 hours per chapter.

Create your course content

Now you’ll need to create the actual content for each lesson of your course. 

Thinkific—the platform we’ll use to build our course in this tutorial—supports lots of different types of lesson content, including:

• Video content
• Text content
• Audio content
• Presentations
• Quizzes
• Assignments
• PDFs
• Downloadable files

If you’re making a video course, make sure the video quality is top-notch. Amateur-looking recordings with poor lighting and fuzzy footage can distract students and negatively impact course engagement (as well as sales) so be sure to invest in a good-quality camera and lighting before you get started.

Tip: If you’ve already created informational content outside of your course (like blog posts, YouTube videos, educational social media posts, podcasts, etc.) then you might want to repurpose this into course material to save time.

Part 2 – Building your online course (with Thinkific)

At this point, you should have a solid plan in place. But to actually build, sell, and deliver your course to students, you’ll need to use an online course platform/learning management system (LMS)

We’re going to use Thinkific for this in this tutorial as it’s our top rated online course platform.

With that in mind, here are the next steps…

Note: If you don’t want to host a course on your own website, you can sell your course through a third-party online course marketplace like uDemy instead. Just keep in mind that while this offers access to an established audience, you’ll need to share profits with the marketplace and you’ll lose control over how your course is sold. 

Sign up for Thinkific

First, you’ll need to head over to the Thinkific website and select a plan. You’ll be able to try the platform free so you can work through this tutorial.

Click here to sign up for a Thinkific free trial.

All plans let you build unlimited courses but the higher-priced plan tiers offer more premium features. 

If you want to try it out before signing up for a paid plan, a 14-day free trial is also available.

Once you’ve signed up, log in and go through the onboarding steps. It should only take a few minutes.

Create a course product

Thinkific will build your online course school website for you automatically. The next step is to add your first online course product.

From your Thinkific dashboard, click + Create > Course to get started.

Next, you’ll have the option to use Thinkific’s AI-powered online course creation tool to generate a course outline and landing page in seconds.

Alternatively, you can start from a blank course product and just fill everything out manually.

Tip: Even though you should have already planned your course outline earlier, I’d still recommend using Thinkific’s AI builder to create online courses as it does a lot of the leg work of putting everything together for you (including designing your landing page). You’ll be able to make changes to it later.

Build your curriculum

Under the Curriculum tab, you’ll be able to build the structure of your course. Use the course outline you planned earlier to guide you here.

First, click + Add chapter to add all your course chapters/modules. Then, click + Add lesson under each chapter to fill them with lessons. 

You can change the order of your lessons/chapters by dragging and dropping the 6 dots on the left.

Tip: It’s up to you how many lessons/chapters you include in your course, but my recommendation is to keep it brief and pack it with value. The less time it takes to complete the course, the higher your course completion rate will be.

Add your lesson content

When you add a new lesson, you’ll be promoted to a lesson type. Options include video, PDF, audio, text, quiz, survey, assignment, etc. Then, you’ll need to add/upload your content.

For video content, you can embed a video from a URL or upload a file directly from your computer. The maximum video file size is 2 GB, which should be plenty of space.

Tip: To save time, you can bulk upload videos to your Thinkific Video Library instead of uploading them manually to each lesson. You can also add closed captions, track video analytics, and more from the library.

Next, add any text, downloadable files, etc. to your lessons as needed. You might also want to change the Lesson settings at the bottom by clicking the relevant checkboxes. 

For example, you can choose to make any lesson a free preview lesson (so that students can enroll and view it for free) or a prerequisite (so that students have to complete it before they move on to the next chapter). 

You can also enable discussions so that students can leave comments and queries, make videos downloadable, etc.

For assignments, you can choose whether you want to manually or automatically approve submissions, set file size limits for student uploads, set a passing grade for quizzes, etc.

You can preview lessons at any time to see how they’ll look to enrolled students in Thinkific’s interactive course player.

Once you’re finished adding lesson content, move on to the next step.

Change your course settings

Click the Settings tab to edit your course settings as needed. 

There are a few things you can do here, including:

• Assign a course instructor
• Choose whether your course is private, public, or hidden
• Add a course image and product description
• Change the appearance and color of the course player
• Set up chapter and course completion messages, pages, and certificates
• Change video progress settings
• Update social sharing settings

Create a drip schedule

You can control when students get access to your course content from the Drip Schedule tab.

Click + Create a Drip Schedule to get started. Then, select a Drip type to choose when you want the course to be released.

Options include when the student enrolls, when the student accesses the course for the first time, and on a specific date in the calendar.

Next, select individual chapters in your course from the sidebar on the left, and choose when you want each lesson in a given chapter to be released.

For example, you might release your first lesson 0 days after enrollment, then the next lesson 7 days after enrollment, the third one 14 days after enrollment, and so on. 

Slowly releasing content over time like this allows you to pace student learning so everyone moves at the same pace. Plus, it gives students a reason to stay subscribed if you plan to sell course memberships (more on this next).

Alternatively, you can just set it up so that students have access to everything as soon as they enroll so that they can work through it at their own pace.

Set your pricing

Next, open the Pricing tab to set your course prices.

You have a few options here:

• Free. Make your course content completely free to subscribers. If you want, you also have the option to make it free for a limited time only (just enter the number of Days Until Expiry in the text box).
• One-time payment. Students pay a one-time fee for access to your course content. If you want, you can set an Enrollment Duration to limit the number of days they have access to it.
• Subscriptions. Students pay a recurring monthly fee for ongoing access to your course content (and any other products included in your membership offer). You can choose your billing frequency and optionally offer a free trial period.
• Payment plans. Divide the cost of your course into affordable monthly payments. You can choose how many months you want to allow students to pay over.

Tip: The ideal price for your course will depend on lots of factors including your target audience, niche, credibility/authority, competitors, course length, etc. 

For mid-tier courses with 3-10 hours of content, $50-$200 might be a good ballpark. Remember that you can also upsell add-ons like one-on-one coaching services, access to learner communities, digital products, etc. to increase your revenues.

Build a landing page

Next, click the Landing Page tab to build your course landing page.

This is the page you’ll direct potential students to when marketing your course, and the gateway through which they’ll enroll—so it has to do a great job of selling it.

Fortunately, Thinkific can do most of the work for you here.

Its AI-builder can build a professional-looking landing page for you in seconds. And in my experience, these pages tend to convert like crazy.

All you have to do is choose a style preset (e.g. neutral, sweet, cheerful, professional, etc.) and Thinkific will handle the rest. 

You can then click Edit page to customize it in the drag-and-drop editor. Alternatively, you can start from a blank canvas and build your page from scratch.

You can add new sections to your page in the drag-and-drop builder. Thinkific has a bunch of pre-built, editable section templates for things like CTAs, curriculum overviews, course highlights, etc.

Tip: An effective landing page will highlight your course’s value proposition and feature concise copy that explains why students should sign up. It should also include clear pricing information, offers/discounts, an attractive headline, an eye-catching CTA, and plenty of social proof.

Publish your course

Finally, publish your course from the Publish tab. 

Once published, students will be able to purchase, enroll in, and access your course content through their own Student Dashboard inside your Thinkific school website.

Keep in mind that you’ll need to connect a payment processor to your website and activate your checkout before you can publish your first course. 

To do so, go to Settings > Payments > Set up Thinkific Payments. You might also want to set up automatic tax collection while you’re at it.

Tip: You also have the option of changing the publish status to Pre-order. If you do, students will still be able to purchase and enroll in it, but they won’t be able to access the content until you launch.

Add complementary products (optional)

At this point, you should already have your course ready to sell.

However, you might also want to sell other related products alongside your course. 

For example, if you’re selling your course as a subscription membership, you might want to create a Community product and bundle it up with your membership, or sell it as an add-on.

A community is a branded space on your site where students can interact with each other and instructors for a more collaborative learning experience.

To set one up, go to Products > Communities > Add new community. Then, customize it as needed.

Other products you might want to sell include Digital Downloads and Coaching & Webinars.

Complete your school website

Your online course school is nearly complete. The last thing you might want to do is add a final few finishing touches.

For example, under Channels > Website, you can create, edit, and customize all your website pages including student dashboards, sign-up/sign-in pages, checkout pages, etc.

From the Settings tab, you can change your school name, connect a custom URL, change your course player theme, tweak your sign-up settings, and so on.

From the Users tab, you can create digital course certificates to reward your students, change your notification emails, set up student progress reports, etc.

Part 3 – Marketing your online course

Once everything is set up exactly the way you want it, you’re ready to start marketing your online course and driving sales. Here’s what to do…

Build a sales funnel

A sales funnel is how you move potential customers to paying customers.

It’s a series of steps designed to usher prospects from one stage of the buyer journey to the next until they’re ready to make a purchase.

Typically, it starts with a lead capture page—this is where you get potential customers to sign up for your mailing list (so you can continue communicating with them) by offering them something in exchange (a lead magnet). 

The next step in your funnel might be a sequence of marketing emails designed to increase interest in your course and ‘nurture’ your leads toward conversion.

The final step might be a personalized sales page with an exclusive discount offer for each lead to incentivize them to finally make that purchase. You get the idea.

Thinkific makes it easy to build your sales funnel in minutes. Just go to Marketing > Funnels > Create Funnel. Then, choose a template.

I particularly like the Free Lesson Funnel template. It works by offering potential students a single free lesson in exchange for their email address. This helps to raise awareness of your course and get leads into your funnel.

When you’ve selected a funnel template, Thinkific will walk you through the setup process. 

You’ll be prompted to set a discount offer to display on your funnel landing page to incentivize leads to make a purchase.

Then, you’ll have the option to cross-sell a complementary product on the purchase confirmation page (this might be something like one-on-one coaching or community access).

You can use the AI wizard to automatically build all the content for your funnel, including your lead capture page, purchase prompts, recapture prompts/emails, etc.

Once you’re done, you’ll see the funnel laid out in a customizable flow chart. 

You can then edit all the emails/pages in the flow chart as needed. And when you’re done, just hit Publish funnel to finish.

Related reading: 75 Sales Funnel Statistics You Should Know

Set up email automation

Email is a super important marketing channel for selling courses. 

To set up automated marketing emails, go to Marketing > Email Automation from your Thinkific dashboard.

From here, you can set up abandoned cart emails to automatically send an email follow-up to leads who abandon their carts before finalizing their purchase. This is a great way to increase conversion rates and recoup lost sales.

You can also set up custom email sequences specifically designed to help guide your audience toward buying your courses.

Related reading: The Best Time To Send Emails (Latest Data)

Launch an affiliate program

Affiliate marketing is when you use other people to promote your products. In return, they earn a commission for every sale they refer to your business.

This approach is especially effective for selling online courses because you’re only paying for tangible results. 

Unlike paid ads, where you’re charged for impressions or clicks regardless of outcomes, affiliate marketing ensures you pay only when a sale is made, making it a low-risk, high-reward strategy.

You can set up an affiliate program easily with Thinkific. Just click Marketing > Affiliates in the sidebar. Then, click Manage affiliates.

From here, you can add new users to your Thinkific account as affiliates. This will give them access to their own affiliate dashboard and custom referral links.

You get to choose how much commission to pay them on each sale. You can set a flat rate in US dollars ($) or a percentage-based amount.

Thinkific will handle referral tracking for you so it’s super hands-off.

Tip: Don’t forget to encourage word-of-mouth referrals from your existing customers/students too. Ask them to tell their friends and family about the course if they enjoyed it, and consider offering exclusive discounts/commissions to reward those who do.

Build order bumps

You can build order bumps with Thinkific (Sales > Order Bumps) to increase your average order values so that you earn more money per sale. 

Order bumps are when you embed complementary product offers in your checkout so that, while customers are in the process of buying your course, they’re offered the option to add a second product to their order for a discounted price.

Offer discount coupons

Thinkific also lets you build coupons to offer discounted pricing offers (Sales > Coupons).

Coupons are great for making customers feel like they’re getting a bargain, which helps to increase your conversion rate. 

When creating your coupons, you can set the expiry date and discount amount (offer a % discount or flat rate off). 

Then, create a unique code for each coupon and distribute it to potential customers as part of your wider marketing campaign.

Drive traffic through social media

Social media is one of the most powerful channels for marketing online courses.

Add links to your lead capture pages/course sales page in all your social bios. Then, start posting free, valuable content to build an organic audience that aligns with your target buyers.

For example, you might post short expert tips about whatever topic you teach, alongside a CTA inviting users who want more to sign up for your course.

Run paid ads

Paid advertising is probably the fastest and most reliable way to drive sales and promote your course. However, it’s tricky to get it right.

Experiment with targeted PPC campaigns on Google Ads, Meta Ads, etc. to drive traffic to your course sales page. Be careful with your targeting options and try to set everything up so that your ads only go out to the people who are most likely to be interested in what you’re selling.

Start with a small budget while you test different targeting options. Once you hit the right targeting options and pull off an ad campaign that generates a good return on investment (ROI), you can start to increase your budget and scale up from there.

Become a guest in other people’s content

Reach out to thought leaders in your niche to find opportunities to promote your course to their audience.

For example, if your course teaches people about SEO (search engine optimization), you could reach out to popular digital marketing and SEO bloggers and ask them if you can share a guest post on their site.

Likewise, look for popular podcasts in your niche and reach out to the creators to see if they’d be interested in having you on as a guest, then use the opportunity to promote your course.

Showcase reviews & testimonials

Social proof is powerful.

Potential students want to know that other people have already enrolled in your course and found it valuable, so show them.

On Thinkific, go to Users > Reviews, and make sure you’ve enabled reviews on all your courses. 

Once you’ve enabled them, students enrolled in that course will be able to rate it out of 5 and submit a written review from the player or their dashboard. 

You can then manually approve reviews and add the best ones to your marketing content and sales pages to bolster conversions. Plus, share quotes from the testimonials of satisfied customers to your socials to drive traffic.

Final thoughts

That concludes our step-by-step guide to building a successful online course business. I hope you found it useful.

To recap, the best way to sell online courses is through Thinkific. It has all the tools you need to create an online course website and build, deliver, and market your course content in one place. 

Focus on offering tons of value and target a high-demand, low-competition niche. Build a high-converting funnel, and experiment with the marketing tools & strategies we’ve covered above to drive traffic and leads.

Don’t want to sell online courses? See our list of the 60+ best products to sell online this year for more ideas. You might also want to check out our roundup of the best platforms to sell ebooks.